from the BBC television series, based on novels by Winston Graham
you can view a video of this performance at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KgaI_7T81M&t=7s

Anne Dudley, Theme from Poldark

from the movie Encanto; piano arrangement by Andrew Wrangell, Sheet Music Boss; I really like the syncopation and different articulations in this piece

Lin-Manuel Miranda, We Don't Talk About Bruno

Leonid Hambro (1920 – 2006) was an American concert pianist and composer.  In addition to his academic and performing careers, he was also the musical sidekick of pianist and humorist Victor Borge.  This piece may have started out as a bit of joke but is actually quite clever. Theme (Bagatelle Op. 119), Var. 1 (Minuet in G), Var. 2 (Sonata "Pathétique"), Var. 3 ("Moonlight" Sonata), Var. 4 (Für Elise), Var. 5 (Symphony No. 5)

Leonid Hambro, Happy Birthday, Dear Ludwig, Variations in the Style of Beethoven on "Happy Birthday"

Ravel composed this short "Pavane of Sleeping Beauty" for four hands,  the first of "five children pieces" from Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose suite).  It was published in 1910, the same year Ravel's friend Jacques Charlot made this transcription for solo piano.  Serene and hauntingly beautiful.

Ravel, Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant

Samuel Barber (1910 – 1981) was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator.  Probably his best known work is his Adagio for Strings arranged for string orchestra from the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11.  Barber finished the arrangement in 1936, the same year that he wrote the quartet. It was performed for the first time on November 5, 1938, by Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a radio broadcast.

I’ve heard this piece many times.  It’s been used in film and television sound tracks, most notably Elephant Man and Platoon.  During one of the summer music festivals it occurred to me that this work might have been transcribed for piano, and sure enough it has.  And while clearly part of the strings repertoire, I believe it works remarkably well for solo piano.

Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings

"Thaxted" is a hymn tune by the English composer Gustav Holst, based on the stately theme from the middle section of the Jupiter movement of his orchestral suite The Planets and named after Thaxted, the English village where he lived much of his life.  He adapted the theme in 1921 to fit the patriotic poem "I Vow to Thee My Country" by Cecil Spring Rice but that was as a unison song with orchestra.  It did not appear as a hymn-tune called "Thaxted" until his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams included it in Songs of Praise in 1926.

Gustav Holst, Thaxted, I Vow to Thee My Country

Piano arrangement by Dietmar Steinhauer.  I was motivated to record this performance after the 25th anniversary theatrical re-release of the movie Titanic.

James Horner, My Heart Will Go On (love theme from "Titanic")

This is a piano transcription of the largo section of the beginning of the second movement of Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, more popularly known as the New World Symphony.  It was composed in 1893 while he was the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America and is one of the most popular symphonies of all time.  Astronaut Neil Armstrong took a cassette recording of the New World Symphony during the Apollo 11 mission, the first Moon landing in 1969.

Dvorak, "New World" Symphony No. 9 Largo

German composer Robert Schumann composed a set of thirteen pieces of music for piano in 1838 known as Scenes from Childhood.  Movement No. 7 of the work, Träumerei (loosely translated as day dreaming or reverie), is one of his best known pieces.

Schumann, Träumerei (Kinderszenen, Op. 15 No. 7)

Satie composed and published this piece in 1888.  It uses mild dissonances against harmony to instill a melancholic effect.

Erik Satie, 1ere Gymnopédie

Chopin composed this piece while staying at a monastery in Majorca.  The story is that he took inspiration from a waking dream at the keyboard during a gently falling rain.  His lady companion, the author George Sand, came up with the name “Raindrop” Prelude given the slowly repeating A flat note, like heavy drops of water in a regular rhythm.

Chopin, "Raindrop" Prelude Op. 28 No. 15

To some degree we pianists are like cover artists.  The composer conveys his or her ideas with notes and dynamic markings, but at the end of the day we the pianist own the actual interpretation and performance.  As I get older I feel less tied to the “right way” and with this popular Chopin Valse there was an opportunity to try out more rubato.

Chopin, Valse Op. 64 No. 2

J.S. Bach, Fugue in E Major from Well Tempered Clavier Book 2, BWV 878

Erik Satie, Gnossienne No. 3

Niccolò Paganini, Sonata No. 12 in E Minor, Opus 3

Brahms, Lullaby, Op. 49 No. 4

J.S. Bach, Prelude and Fugue in C Major from Well Tempered Clavier Book 1, BWV 846

with piano transcription of orchestral part

Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 23, K.488 Adagio

a beautiful piano transcription by Wilhelm Kempff

J.S. Bach/Kempff, Siciliano from Flute Sonata No. 2, BWV 1031

Chopin, Nocturne in E Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 2

Rachmaninoff, Vocalise, Op. 34 No. 14

Traditional Scottish Folk Song, The Water is Wide

Grieg, Death Of Ase, from Peer Gynt Suite No. 1

James Newton Howard, Rue’s Farewell, from The Hunger Games

J.S. Bach, Piano Concerto No. 5, BWV 1056 Largo

Handel/Kempff, Minuet in G Minor

D. Scarlatti, Sonata in B Minor, K. 87

J.S. Bach/Marcello, Concerto in D Minor, BWV 974 Adagio

a delightful piano transcription by Sergei Rachmaninoff

J.S. Bach/Rachmaninoff, Gavotte from Violin Partita No. 3, BWV 1006

D. Scarlatti, Sonata in B Minor, K. 27

you can view a video of this performance at https://youtu.be/ixDRGtub8bw

J.S. Bach, Prelude and Fugue in F Minor from Well Tempered Clavier Book 2, BWV 881

you can view a video of this performance at https://youtu.be/-ZSc2WATr3E

Mozart, Sonatina in G Major

you can view a video of this performance at https://youtu.be/o2GYcGcqTug

G. Pescetti, Presto

Chopin, Etude, Op. 10 No. 3

I am an amateur pianist with an ongoing passion for this musical instrument.  These are some favourite pieces, performed on a Yamaha Disklavier grand piano.

Popular tracks by DavidR